


Dragon Summer

by earlgreytea68



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Dragons, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, and a random wizard i guess, and kinda sorta fairy tales
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:54:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 15,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22511332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlgreytea68/pseuds/earlgreytea68
Summary: The fans slip them all sorts of things, so at first none of them really think twice about it.
Relationships: Patrick Stump/Pete Wentz
Comments: 223
Kudos: 198





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have to grade papers all day today so I'm posting this to cheer myself up. I hope it cheers you up, too! We kinda made it through January!
> 
> I always wanted to write a story about a dragon. :-)

The fans slip them all sorts of things, so at first none of them really think twice about it.

“It’s an egg,” Andy says.

“Well spotted,” Joe mocks him.

“Fuck you,” Andy says mildly.

Patrick shrugs and goes back to his comic book.

He would have forgotten all about the egg if he hadn’t found it in his bunk that night.

He blinks at it in bewilderment, where it’s propped up on a little nest of Patrick’s pillow, with Patrick’s blanket snugged up tight against it. It’s a good-sized egg, bigger than Patrick’s hand, and, when he nudges it away so he can sleep, it’s _heavy_. Much heavier than he’d expected. He lays on his back and puts it on his chest and inspects it more closely. It’s a pale gray with bright green flecks and it feels so _solid_ , not at all the fragile way a chicken egg feels.

Pete says, “Oh, hey,” and crawls into bed with him yawning, because Pete is terrible about Patrick’s personal space, so now it’s Patrick, Pete, and the egg, all in Patrick’s tiny bunk on this tour bus.

“What’s this egg doing?” Patrick asks Pete.

“Gestating,” Pete mumbles into Patrick’s neck, cuddling close in that way he does. “Or, so I assume.”

“Okay, what’s this egg doing _in my bed_?”

“Got to keep it warm, right? Isn’t that what mama birds do?”

“I’m hardly a mama bird,” Patrick points out.

Pete snorts. “Don’t I know it, killer.” He bites the side of Patrick’s neck playfully.

Patrick says, “The egg’s not gestating. It’s, like, it can’t be a real egg.”

“Why not?”

“What the fuck is it? An emu? What would we do with an emu?”

Pete sits up as much as he can manage in the limited headspace, his eyes suddenly brightly alert. “Oh, my God, do you think it’s an _emu_? That would be so fucking awesome! I hope it’s an emu!”

“Why?” asks Patrick, bewildered. “We can’t keep an emu.”

“It could be our mascot.”

“An emu?” Patrick says skeptically.

“We could bring it out on stage every night.”

Pete is so far along in this plan in his head that Patrick says to the egg, “Christ, I fervently hope you are not an emu.”

Later, Patrick reflects on the irony that he would have been way better off with an emu.

***

It’s a hotel night, and Patrick steals first shower because it’s every man for himself on hotel nights. He spends a very long time under very hot water, stumbles out into the room, and staggers his way onto his bed, where he debates getting under the covers before falling asleep. It seems like a lot of effort, and the bed is very comfortable. It has a _mattress_. Mattresses wider than six inches are to be cherished. Cherished by sleeping on them very hard.

Pete comes eventually out of his own over-long shower, and Patrick is dozing deeply enough to be practically asleep. But then Pete, on the opposite bed, starts whispering to the fucking egg.

Pete’s whispering, yeah, which is honestly the height of considerateness when it comes to Pete, but it still slices through Patrick’s sleepiness, because what Pete is whispering is, “How’s it going in there, pal? Everything to your liking? How long do you think you’re going to stay in there before you come out to meet us, huh?”

Patrick opens one eye to look at Pete over on the other bed, stroking his fingers over the egg thoughtfully. Pete is fucking obsessed with this egg. He takes close care of it, moving it himself when it needs to be moved, tucking it in for safe keeping in various spots on the bus. The rest of them have learned to navigate around Pete’s egg. Patrick has no idea what Pete intends to fucking do with it.

Pete is humming now, off-key and under his breath, as he strokes at the egg. It’s ridiculous, how much he seems to love this egg. It makes Patrick’s heart clench painfully, like he has indigestion or something. Patrick has, since meeting Pete, cleaned up a thousand unnecessary messes and vetoed a thousand terrible ideas, and this egg has the making of both. But he also knows that there are probably few things better in the world than being the object Pete Wentz has decided to dedicate unswerving loyalty to.

Patrick says suddenly, “What are you going to do if the egg never hatches?” He’d wanted to say _when the egg never hatches_ , but he thought that was too harsh.

Pete doesn’t seem surprised that Patrick is awake and talking to him. He keeps stroking the egg and says thoughtfully, “Maybe it needs a heat lamp,” which doesn’t answer Patrick’s question.

Patrick sighs and watches him and thinks about how high Pete sets expectations and how dangerous it is when they’re not met.

How dangerous it is when they’re met, too.

He says finally, softly, “It’s a hotel night. Don’t waste it, huh? Get some sleep.”

Pete hmms noncommittally.

“Pete,” Patrick says, and waits until he looks up at him. “Come to bed.”

Pete smiles a small, quick smile, then takes up his egg and carries it over to Patrick’s bed, where he settles on the other side of Patrick, the egg on his chest.

“Sing us something,” Pete says.

Patrick sings until Pete falls asleep. Then he carefully takes the egg out of his arms and wraps it in the edge of the bedspread and settles it for safe keeping at their heads.

“If there’s something inside this thing,” he informs it, “you’d better not let Pete down, okay?”

If there’s something inside the egg, it doesn’t respond.

***

As it happens, there is something inside the egg, and Patrick is the first one to meet it.

He’s alone on the bus. He doesn’t know where everyone else is and he doesn’t really care. Alone time is precious, and he’s taking advantage of it by taking up as much space as possible, scattering instruments and electronics and himself all over the lounge area. Pete’s egg is sitting on the couch. Pete himself is probably hooking up with some chick somewhere, whatever.

Patrick at first thinks the tapping is something in the track he’s listening to, and he keeps trying to isolate it, and it takes him a while to figure out that it’s coming from the egg. Pete’s egg. Right there on the couch. Whatever’s inside it is tapping to get out. Tapping hard enough that the egg is swaying.

Patrick, startled, instinctively skids away from the egg, staring at it. He pulls his earphones out and breathes, “Jesus Christ,” because he really honestly never thought this fucking egg was going to fucking hatch. He contemplates texting Pete and at the same time he is frozen in place, unable to look away from the egg, which is now cracking in spiderwebs all over it, spreading.

 _Jesus fuck, I should have looked up how to take care of baby emus_ , Patrick thinks wildly, as the egg is finally breached and whatever is inside struggles to get out.

And what’s inside…isn’t an emu.

The thing sits in a pile of slime on their couch and looks at Patrick curiously. It’s about the size of Patrick’s fist, and it’s got a bright, vivid green tail, and four legs ending in tiny needle claws, and a long neck crowned with a weirdly expressive face, luminous eyes that shine like tiny galaxies, and two tufts coming out that might be ears but look comical.

Patrick doesn’t realize he’s crawled forward until he’s right in front of the thing, which sits still and watches him approach, wide eyes locked on him.

“What the hell are you?” breathes Patrick at the little creature, because he has no fucking idea. It’s a lizard. Some kind of iguana? A chameleon?

And then the little thing starts hiccupping. And the thing is: smoke starts coming out of its mouth. Tiny puffs of black smoke.

Patrick backs up again, newly alarmed, because there is clearly something wrong with this baby creature and it’s going to drop dead and Pete is going to be heartbroken to find a dead egg inhabitant, and then the thing makes a sound like a sneeze and literal flames shoot out of its nostrils, the force propelling the creature back against the couch cushion behind it.

“What the fuck,” Patrick says dazedly. That was… That was _fire_.

He stares at the thing on the couch, off-balance now, its little legs flailing to right itself.

“Yo,” Joe says, swinging his way into the bus behind Patrick. “What is happening, my dude?”

Patrick stares at the creature on the couch, who stares back at him. Patrick says to Joe, “I think Pete’s egg just gave birth to a fucking dragon.”


	2. Chapter 2

Patrick is futilely Googling what the fuck baby dragons eat.

“There’s no such thing as dragons,” Joe tells him, for like the fiftieth time.

Pete’s baby dragon is curled up at the edge of the couch, starry eyes steady on Patrick. There’s something about those eyes that makes Patrick think of the way Pete looks at him, like he expects the world out of him and he’s going to be very disappointed if Patrick can’t deliver. Patrick feels exactly the way he does when Pete gazes at him, like he doesn’t want to let this tiny dragon down, he’s going to figure out what to feed it.

“I’m telling you,” Patrick says, “it was breathing fire.”

Joe looks dubiously at the tiny dragon. The dragon huffs a little sigh, flicks its head tufts forward, and reaches a tiny claw out for Patrick. Patrick absently grabs the paw before the dragon can overbalance onto the floor.

Patrick says, “I don’t know, it says that bearded dragons eat insects, but Harry Potter dragons eat, like, meat and fish or something, and also I should light a fire for it.” Patrick peers at the little dragon to see if it might offer an opinion. Instead, it just digs its tiny needle claws into Patrick’s thumb. It doesn’t hurt; it feels like clinging.

“Patrick,” Joe says, and then doesn’t say anything else.

“What do you think, little thing?” Patrick asks the dragon. “Are you cold?” 

“Patrick, did you eat something…or smoke something…or drink something…that maybe someone gave you, or…?”

Patrick glares at him. “I’m not _high_ , Joe.”

“Look, I don’t know what that thing is—” Joe pointed—“but it’s not a dragon.”

And then the dragon hiccups and blows flames all over Patrick’s hand.

Patrick jerks back, cursing, and the dragon flails and then falls to the floor with a little squeak.

“Jesus Christ, I’ve killed it,” Patrick exclaims in alarm, rescuing it, but it seems none the worse for wear, squirming in his hands.

“Jesus Christ, that thing just breathed fire and burned your hand,” Joe counters, sounding shocked.

Patrick gives him an annoyed look as he walks over to the sink to run his burned hand under the water. “I told you.”

The dragon, cupped in the hand Patrick isn’t running under water, watches the faucet curiously.

Joe says, “Okay, okay, wait, wait, wait. Where the fuck did Pete get a _dragon_ from?”

“That is the least surprising thing,” Patrick says calmly, turning the faucet off and turning back to Joe. “Honestly, if you had to predict which of us would have a dragon, who would you predict?”

“ _No one_ ,” says Joe, “because dragons don’t fucking exist.” He’s staring at the dragon in Patrick’s hand fearfully. “Maybe _I’m_ the one who’s super-high.”

Patrick says, “This dragon exists. And Pete’s going to be obsessed.”

“Obsessed with what?” Pete asks, bouncing onto the bus. He’s in an obvious good mood, tackling Patrick into a hug.

Patrick holds both of his hands up over their heads.

Pete keeps talking. He’s in that kind of mood. “Obsessed with you, Tricky? Because I am _totally_ obsessed with you. True. Statement.” Pete kisses his cheek extravagantly, then looks up. “What’s wrong with your hands?” And then his eyes finally focus on the dragon. “Hang on, what’s that? A lizard?” He pulls down the hand holding the dragon.

“So,” Patrick begins. “Here’s the thing.”

Pete’s jaw has dropped open. “Oh, my God,” he says, “is this what was in the egg? Did my egg hatch?”

The dragon, hearing Pete’s voice, swishes its tail around and leans toward him, galaxy eyes bright.

Pete’s face lights up even more. “It recognizes my voice!” He pulls the lizard into his hand. “Hello, little lizard, I was waiting for you!” he croons to it, and scratches behind its ear tuft things.

The dragon flicks its ear tufts forward.

Patrick says, “Okay, but here’s what you need to—”

“It’s a dragon,” Joe blurts out.

Pete starts laughing. “Yeah, okay,” he says.

“No, no,” Patrick says. “Joe’s right. That’s a dragon.” Patrick holds his hand out, a little red and shiny with the burn.

Pete says in alarm, “Patrick! Your hand! Are you going to be able to play tonight?”

“That’s a good question,” Patrick says calmly. “Also a good question is how we got a _dragon_.”

Pete looks at the dragon in his hand. “This little thing is a dragon?”

The dragon chooses that moment to hiccup some smoke Pete’s way.

“Oh, fuck,” says Pete.

***

Patrick struggles his way through playing that night, because his hand hurts like a motherfucker. It’s throbbing painfully by the time the set is over and he’s not inclined to feel kindly toward the dragon Pete’s curled up with on his bed.

“What is this?” Patrick asks, exhausted. He stepped into and out of the shower and wrapped a wet cloth around his poor hand, and he just wants to go to bed.

“Come to bed,” Pete says. “You look beat.”

“I _am_ beat,” says Patrick. “I would really like to go to bed.”

“Cool. Spot and I will cuddle with you.”

“Spot?”

“I’m calling him Spot. It’s an ironic name, because he doesn’t have spots.”

“Great,” Patrick says with no enthusiasm. “Cool. Can you, like, take your dragon named Spot and go to your _own_ bed for a change?”

“Aw, Patrick.” Pete pouts at him, mouth downturned and puppy-dog eyes in place.

“No,” says Patrick, shaking his head. “I am _tired_ and I want to _sleep_.”

And then Spot the dragon uncurls from where it’s tucked next to Pete and comes over to Patrick and puts its head on Patrick’s good hand, blinking up at him with huge puppy-dog eyes of its own.

Damn it, thinks Patrick, annoyed.

“Look,” says Pete, “Spot _loves_ you. I think he’s imprinted on you. You’re his _mom_.”

God _damn_ those puppy-dog eyes, thinks Patrick. “I’m not his mom, I’m like…not his mom. You hatched the egg, you’re his mom.”

“We’re both his moms,” Pete says, stroking a hand fondly along Spot. Spot looks rapturously between the two of them. “Look at our baby dragon, Trick.”

“He’s not our baby dragon,” Patrick protests futilely.

“Oh, he definitely is, Trickalicious. We are co-parenting a baby dragon together.” Pete looks delighted by this turn of events.

Patrick sighs heavily. “Just…shove over.”

Pete and Spot clear a tiny amount of space for Patrick to squeeze into. Whatever. Spot curls up next to him with a contented little sigh, and Patrick doesn’t want to admit it’s cute and sweet.

“Don’t breathe fire on me,” Patrick grumbles.

“I’m training him,” Pete says earnestly. “We had a big talk about the fire thing.”

“How do you know it’s a he?” Patrick asks sleepily, closing his eyes.

He falls asleep before Pete finishes saying, “Good point.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been at a work conference literally since posting the last chapter so I haven't had time to respond to comments but they have all given me LIFE as I've been working. Still at the conference but here's the next chapter and I'll return to regular life soon!

Somehow, they have a dragon.

Well, the answer to the “somehow” is: because Pete Wentz.

Because of Pete Wentz, they have a dragon. It’s definitely Pete’s fault, the way most things are in Patrick’s life.

The dragon lives on the bus with them. They smuggle him into hotel nights. Patrick’s pretty sure the hotel staff assume they’re smuggling drugs in, and he wants to be like, _I wish we were that fucking normal a band_. But no. They have a dragon.

Spot grows in leaps and bounds. He eats a lot of Spam.

“Is Spam good for dragons?” Patrick asks, watching Pete toss slices of it to Spot, who catches them in the air and flicks his tail back and forth happily. Spot’s tail is a weapon. The bus has never been so neat as it now is in an attempt to keep Spot from causing mass destruction every time he moves.

“Patrick,” Pete says grandly. “We are in _uncharted territory_. How the fuck do I know if it’s good for dragons? All I know is, Spot loves it, and we give Spot everything he wants to make him happy, don’t we, Spot?” Pete scratches behind Spot’s ear-tufts and Spot rolls onto his back so that Pete can rub his belly, and really Spot is just a big, fire-breathing puppy. “Who’s my best dragon?” Pete croons to Spot. “Who is it? Is it you? I think it’s you!” Pete plants a kiss on Spot’s belly.

Patrick watches with a weird, unnameable feeling in the pit of his stomach. He says, “Pete, we can’t hide a dragon forever.”

“Yes, we can,” Pete says confidently, because Pete is always confident of everything, and especially of impossible things. “We’ll put a hat on his head.”

Patrick looks at Pete curiously, as Pete keeps rubbing the ecstatic Spot’s belly. “Do you think hats make things invisible? Why is your solution to everything ‘Put a hat on it’?”

“Hats are cute,” says Pete. “Who’d get mad at a dragon with a hat?” Pete looks up at Patrick and beams. “Who wouldn’t find a Patrick with a hat _adorable_ , am I right?”

Patrick sighs. “We need a plan beyond ‘hope that people won’t freak out about a dragon if it’s wearing a hat,’ which, frankly, seems like an unlikely hope.”

“Patrick,” Pete says, stopping his rubbing of Spot’s belly to sit on the floor of the bus next to Spot. “You know what your problem is? Spot, do you know what Patrick’s problem is? Spot knows what your problem is.”

Patrick’s heard this problem from Pete before. “Is my problem that I worry too much?” he asks drily.

“That is exactly your problem!” exclaims Pete. “Well done, you!” He looks at Spot. “Isn’t Patrick the _smartest_?”

“Stop it,” Patrick mutters, vaguely embarrassed, no matter how many times he hears this, “it isn’t worrying too much when we have a _dragon_.”

Pete takes Patrick’s hand and tugs him down until he’s sitting on the floor of the bus with him.

“Tricky,” Pete says earnestly, “Spot was literally handed to us for safekeeping. We have to keep him safe. It’s our _job_. He’s _ours_. You’re his _mom_ , remember?”

As if to punctuate this point, Spot lays his head adoringly on Patrick’s lap, blinking at him with his nebulae eyes.

Patrick sighs and scratches behind his ear tufts because that always makes Spot’s tail flit back and forth with happiness. Eventually, he thinks, eventually they are not going to be able to keep Spot on this bus.

But Patrick looks at Pete, who is gazing at them with such pure contentment, and knows that he’ll do anything to keep that look on Pete’s face, including agreeing to keep a _baby dragon_.

So they keep on keeping Spot.

***

Patrick is rudely awakened, which is just an ordinary night on the Fall Out Boy bus.

Pete is shaking him awake and hissing at him, and Patrick flaps a hand at him and rolls over to try to recapture his sleep.

“It’s fine,” he mumbles muzzily, “just get into the bed, stop being fucking…you know.”

“No,” Pete whispers urgently. “Patrick. Get up. I want to show you something.” Pete shakes him again.

“What the fuck?” Patrick complains, opening his eyes to glare at him. “Huh? What? You have to show me something _right now_? What the fuck, Pete.” He’s still complaining, whining Pete’s name out into several syllables, even as he’s letting Pete pull him upright.

“Just go with him already and let the rest of us get some fucking sleep,” Joe snips from his bunk.

Joe is still warm and cozy and _sleeping_ while Patrick is being dragged around by a Pete Wentz and is decidedly _not_ sleeping.

Patrick’s rubbing his eyes when Pete leads him off the bus. The bus is stopped, Patrick registers for the first time. They’re at a gas station. It’s a bright, lit-up beacon; the rest of the world around them is pitch black and flung over with stars.

Patrick’s been on the road a lot, but he never really gets used to the astonishing beauty of the sky in places like this, where the light pollution is far away and the rest of the universe seems like a place you could step right into. He takes a moment to glance up at the stars, automatic. It’s colder than he expected, and he wonders vaguely not only where they are but also what month it is. The air feels like fall coming. It must be August.

And then, suddenly, there’s a fireball.

The burst of fire comes from a field off to Patrick’s left, and he looks at it, startled, and then realizes what it is: It’s Spot. He’s racing around the open field in joy, breathing fire into the air above him, unmistakably frolicking.

“Look at him,” Pete whispers to Patrick, and brushes his little finger against Patrick’s. “Look how happy is.”

And the thing is. The thing is that Patrick is standing there in the middle of nowhere, Pete’s hand brushing his, watching their dragon puppy bounce through a field, and he’s so fucking happy that he literally feels _tears_ prick his eyes. Like, it’s ridiculous, but Patrick can’t help it. He blames being woken from a sound sleep. He’s overtired and overemotional. He brushes hastily at his eyes and watches their dragon.

Pete utters a small, happy sigh and nestles close, head on Patrick’s shoulder, and it’s not like Pete doesn’t cuddle up to Patrick all the fucking time, because he does, but this feels sweeter and softer, wrapped in this starry darkness with a fire-breathing dragon. Patrick wishes he was a poet like Pete, so he could find words for the perfection of this moment, for how he wants to lock it up and live in it forever, how he never wants to forget how it feels right now to be Patrick Stump, next to Pete Wentz, with Spot the dragon.

Their bus driver says faintly, “You know, you kept saying you had a dragon back there but I…just thought you were a bunch of high musicians.”

Pete snorts laughter, turning his head to bury it into Patrick’s neck.

Patrick smiles at Spot, turning a somersault of fire now, and says, “Nope. He’s a real dragon. And he’s ours.”

Spot comes galloping over to them, looking jubilant that Patrick’s joined them, butting his head up against Patrick’s hand demandingly until Patrick gives in and pets him fondly.

“Okay, okay,” Patrick says. “Have you been enough of a fire hazard for the night? Can we get moving again?”

“It made him happy,” Pete says. “We might be bad dragon moms. We never let him run around and breathe fire.”

“We live on a bus,” Patrick reminds him. “Where’s he going to breathe fire on the bus?”

“Poor Spot,” says Pete. “Would you rather have other moms?”

But Spot snuggles up close to Patrick and wraps his tail around Pete to pull him into the embrace, too, so Patrick kind of doubts it.

When Spot tucks up at the foot of Patrick’s bunk, the way he always does, it means there’s barely room for Patrick and Pete. Patrick never had any room in his bunk because of Pete constantly taking it over but it’s worse now that Spot’s there, and now that Spot’s grown so big that he really doesn’t fit there. But he’s there now, snoring very loudly. Smoke puffs out of his nose when he snores. Every once in a while he twitches, and Patrick thinks he must be dreaming.

“You know what you said?” Pete murmurs, curled up next to Patrick. Pete’s always been a close cuddler but they don’t have any choice now, given the tiny portion of the bunk that belongs to them.

“When?” asks Patrick.

“I don’t know when. Before. Way before. About how we need a plan. And my plan is to get Spot a hat.”

“Yes,” Patrick agrees. “Your hat plan. I remember that.”

“You might be right,” says Pete.

“About hats not making things invisible?”

“About us being bad dragon moms. About Spot deserving someone better than the two of us.” Pete sounds small and sad, gazing at Spot at the end of the bed.

“Hey,” Patrick says, hating that tone of voice out of Pete. “I never said we were bad moms. I just said we wouldn’t be able to hide him forever. We’re not bad moms. Look how good he’s doing.”

“He was so happy tonight. Couldn’t you tell? _So_ happy. If we didn’t live on a bus, we could buy a big ranch somewhere and just let him run around breathing fire all the time. Want to buy a ranch with me, Trick?”

“I have no doubt that you could convince me to buy a ranch with you,” says Patrick drily, “but Spot was happy tonight to be sharing that with _us_. He’s a pretty domestic dragon. I don’t think he wants more space.” This was kind of a lie—Patrick thought Spot seemed cramped on their bus, and he didn’t know why he was trying to find ways to keep Spot, when he thought that was going to ultimately prove impossible. But also, he could tell that Spot was happy. Pete was wrong, they weren’t bad dragon moms, they just didn’t have the proper equipment. “Remember,” Patrick continues, “you used to sing to him when he was still in his egg. He’s one of the few creatures on the planet that would miss your voice.”

Pete says after a second, “You were the first person he saw after he was born. That’s not the kind of thing you forget.”

Patrick thinks it sounds like exactly the kind of thing you’d forget—he can’t remember the first person he saw after he was born; he doesn’t know anyone who can—but maybe dragons work differently, and Spot does seem pretty attached to him.

Patrick says, “He’s our perfect baby dragon. We’re good dragon moms.”

Spot twitches again in his sleep, his clawed dragon feet in pursuit of some fictional enemy.

Pete presses closer to Patrick and says, “Yeah.”


	4. Chapter 4

It’s the end of a long day of press. Patrick always starts exhausted and gets worse on press days, but you know it’s been a long day when even _Pete_ seems tired. They’ve been answering the same pointless, boring questions for hours, and Pete’s lost interest in the games he uses to keep Patrick entertained throughout the day, and so everything’s just _worse_. But it’s the last interview of the day and Patrick is determined to get through it.

The journalist is Generic Hipster through and through: flannel, huge beard, the works. He sits opposite them and regards them with cool accusation, and the hostility wakes Patrick up a little.

“Hi there,” Pete drawls laconically, and Patrick can tell he’s sensing the aggression, too. “Can we help you?”

“You’ve got something of mine,” says Hipster Dude, “and I want it back.” He has a silky way of speaking, like a tie slithering out from under a collar.

Pete barks tired, unamused laughter. “Yeah, okay,” he says. “Just ask us some questions already.”

“I have only one question.” The Hipster Dude’s smile makes Patrick think of a snake getting ready to strike, he doesn’t like it _at all_. “Where is it?” demands the Hipster Dude.

There’s something wrong about this whole encounter, thinks Patrick uneasily. He’s not sure if this guy’s supposed to be in there. “Look,” he begins, “we’re not going to—”

“Where’s _what_?” asks Pete in sarcastic exasperation.

“My dragon egg,” says Hipster Dude.

Pete and Patrick freeze identically.

“What?” Patrick manages to croak.

“My dragon egg.” Hipster Dude is seething now, his eyes flickering back and forth between Pete and Patrick, and really, all Patrick can think of is that he must be a snake, he’s got to be a snake, he’s way too much like a snake. “Someone stole it from me, and I tracked it down to the two of you. Now I’m not saying _you_ stole it—you’re not nearly clever enough to have stolen something from _me_ —but nevertheless you have it and now I want it back.” Hipster Dude’s voice is flat and uncompromising.

“We don’t—We don’t have a dragon egg,” Patrick says, thinking outright denial is definitely the best tactic.

“Why?” Pete cuts in sharply.

Hipster Dude gives him a narrow-eyed look. “Excuse me?”

“Why do you want a dragon egg so bad? Going to make yourself a great big dragon egg omelet?” asks Pete.

Patrick wants to shut Pete up, because he doesn’t know what this Hipster Dude is but he’s pretty sure it’s not entirely human and Pete’s going to get them killed by some supernatural creature and the last day of Patrick’s life will have been a _press day_ , Jesus Christ, he cannot possibly have that happen. “Pete—” he tries.

“Why is it of any concern to _you_ ,” demands the Hipster Dude grandly, “what I do with _my_ dragon egg that I paid an exorbitant amount of money for?”

“No, no, cool, cool, you’re right, you’re right,” says Pete, with a series of extravagant shrugs. “It doesn’t matter, because we don’t have any dragon egg. Do we, Patrick?”

They have a rambunctious baby dragon, but they don’t have a dragon egg. “Nope,” Patrick says. “We do not have a dragon egg.”

Hipster Dude narrows his unamused eyes at them.

“Yo,” says Pete, “this interview’s over,” and jerks his chin toward the door.

“This interview’s over when I say it’s over,” Hipster Dude bites out, making Patrick suppress a shiver.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” says Pete evenly, “but we’re kind of big deal rock stars. People don’t talk to us who we don’t want talking to us.” Pete raises his voice to call, “Jeremy?” without ever taking his cold eyes off Hipster Dude.

The kid the record label sent over to keep their press day running smoothly sticks his head in. “Yeah?

“This interview’s over,” Pete says, and stands up and walks out of the room.

Patrick glances at Hipster Dude uneasily, then follows.

He doesn’t think any of this is anywhere close to being over.

***

“Okay, what the _fuck_ ,” Patrick hisses to Pete, following him as he stalks swiftly down the hotel hallway.

“It’s fine,” Pete says, nonsensically, because it’s definitely not fine.

They get to Patrick’s room. The record label’s buttering them up, they’ve each got their own room, it’s the height of luxury and it doesn’t matter, Pete opens the door to Patrick’s room because Pete has a fucking key to Patrick’s hotel room, that’s how fucked up they are, even when they’re supposed to be apart they’re together, and in the room their baby dragon greets them happily, and that’s even _more_ fucked up. 

“Hello, Spot!” Pete says heartily. “Did you miss us?” He scratches behind Spot’s ear tufts.

Spot butts his head up against Pete and then up against Patrick.

“Yeah, hi, Spot,” Patrick says, distracted, giving one of his ear tufts a gentle tug, and then he says, “Pete, that—”

“Ot-nay in front of Ot-spay,” Pete says, tickling between Spot’s tiny iridescent wings.

Spot snorts black smoke with gleeful laughter.

“I don’t know if it’s ridiculous that you think the dragon understands English, or ridiculous that you think the dragon understands English and not Pig Latin,” fumes Patrick, frustrated.

“Spot and I are going for a walk,” Pete announces stubbornly.

“ _Where_?” shouts Patrick. “We have a _baby dragon_! There is nowhere you can take him for a walk! We can’t be seen with him! We have to hide him away everywhere we go! Smuggle him from place to place! What kind of life is that for him?”

“Oh, so we should just hand him over to some strange, creepy dude who was going to make him into an omelet?” Pete demands.

Spot looks between the two of them and makes a whining sound, his tail falling to the ground dejectedly.

Patrick says, “ _No_ , I’m not suggesting we should hand him over, I’m saying we’ve been dancing around this for weeks now, the fact that _we can’t keep a pet dragon_ —”

“Why are you always like this?” Pete retorts. “Why are you always ‘no, no, no, no’? Why can’t you ever think in positive possibilities for once? Every single fucking good thing we’ve ever gotten to have happened because I ignored you saying ‘no,’ because the best fucking risk in the entire universe could walk up to you and offer to suck your dick and you’d still tell it, ‘no, no, you’re a risk, I’m Patrick Stump, I don’t fucking do risks, not even cock-sucking ones.’”

“That is not true!” Patrick throws up his hands in exasperation. “I’m in a band with fucking Pete Wentz! How risk-averse could I possibly fucking be?”

“Yeah,” Pete says hotly. “Yeah, you’re right.” He runs a fidgety hand through his emo hair, leaving it spiking with sticky product. “Where’s your fucking medal for dealing with me for so long?”

“That’s not what I meant,” says Patrick, annoyed. “Pete. That’s not what I meant.”

“You don’t _have_ to do it, you know,” says Pete. “The band. Spot. Me. You don’t have to fucking do any of it. You’re a grown-up. Come on, Spot.” Pete bundles Spot up close to him. He’s almost too big to do this anymore. They can’t possibly keep him a secret much longer.

“Pete,” Patrick says, “you can’t just—”

“Don’t fucking tell me what to do, I’m Pete Wentz, I make stupid decisions and act like a reckless idiot all the time.” Pete steps out of the hotel room, slamming the door extra hard behind him.

“Goddamn it,” Patrick mumbles, pinching the bridge of his nose, because all of that probably could have gone better. “Fucking hell,” he sighs, and kicks the wall; sometimes Pete Wentz just drives you to attack inanimate objects.

They can’t keep a dragon. They’re a pretty successful rock band. They get photographed. Spot is getting bigger and bigger. Someone’s going to be like, _Hey, what’s the weird lizard thing you’ve always got with you?_ And then Spot’s going to breathe fire somewhere and it’s going to be captured on film and hey, Patrick frets about dick pics being leaked, never mind the irresistible picture of a real live dragon.

And all of this is without the added complication of some weird fucking dude tracking them down and wanting Spot. Like, Patrick is definitely not giving Spot to that guy, that’s not at all Patrick’s point. And Patrick also doesn’t think they’ve seen the last of that guy.

Patrick’s right, because that guy is the first person he sees when he steps outside the hotel looking for Pete. Patrick ducks immediately back inside, but it’s too late: He’s been noticed.

“Mr. Stumf,” the guy calls after him.

“It’s Stump, actually,” Patrick replies, without pausing in his walking away from him. All he knows is Pete is supposedly outside with Spot, and Patrick wants this guy far away from them, so he’ll happily lead him all over the hotel.

“Is it?” says the man without interest. “You should really stop and talk to me. I know you have the dragon.”

“I don’t have the dragon,” Patrick says, still walking, but extending his hands out so the guy can see how empty they are. “No dragon anywhere here.”

“Oh, the dragon is definitely _here_ ,” the man retorts, silky smooth, that tone that makes Patrick’s spine wriggle unpleasantly. “I can _feel_ him. You think a wizard doesn’t know when something that belongs to him is near?”

If Patrick didn’t have a dragon that slept in his bunk every night, he’d totally think this guy was bonkers. Instead he just says, unimpressed, “I don’t know. For a wizard, it took you long enough to track him down.”

“But now that I have, I want him back,” says the guy.

“You know,” says Patrick. He’s reached as far as he can go in the hotel corridors he’s been wandering. The next door leads outside. He stops walking and turns back to face the guy, who also stops a few feet away from him. “Even if I had a dragon – which I don’t – what’s the big deal? Go to the dragon shelter and adopt yourself a new pet.”

“A pet?” echoes the man. “A _pet_?” He takes a few slow steps closer to Patrick, and Patrick fights against the unease that tells him to _run away_. “You stupid mortal, you think a dragon is a _pet_? Do you know how _valuable_ every piece of that creature is? Do you know how many spells require a dragon heart, and how difficult they are to come by? Never mind dragon liver and dragon intestine and dragon blood. He’s not a _pet_ , Mr. Stumf, he’s a _goldmine_.”

Patrick’s breaths are shaky and fast and his hands are curled into fists. He doesn’t think it’s a good idea to punch this guy, so he’s fighting the impulse very hard. But he’s got a dragon that sleeps in his bunk every night, that cuddles close to him, that loves to be scratched and tickled and petted, that follows him around like a sweet puppy. He doesn’t have a pile of dragon organs, he has _Spot_.

Patrick says, with a casualness he doesn’t feel, “In that case, you’d better figure out who stole him from you, sounds like they stole a small fortune.”

The obnoxious hipster dude guy takes one last step closer to Patrick. Patrick could start counting his beard hairs if he so desired. The guy breathes in his satin-soft voice, “You think this is a game. It’s not. You have taken something very precious to me. I can easily take something very precious to you. I am speaking to you because you strike me as the more reasonable of the two of you: Bring me the dragon.”

“The thing is,” Patrick says, flat with fury, “neither one of us is especially reasonable.” Patrick steps out around the guy and starts walking back toward the lobby.

“You’re making a mistake, Mr. Stumf,” the guy calls after him.

“You can suck Mr. Stumph’s dick,” Patrick mutters, and throws up his middle fingers.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains references to Pete's suicide attempt.

Patrick texts and calls Pete to no avail, and finally he gives up and goes to Pete’s suite, letting himself in with the key Pete had handed across to him out of habit. His plan was to wait until Pete and Spot got back but instead Spot greets him at the door, bounding up to him happily, wings fluttering, and Patrick realizes Pete never went out at all. No wonder the creepy hipster dude went after Patrick; Pete had never been down there to see. Patrick is grateful for that; he’s not sure Spot would still be here otherwise.

“Hi, kiddo,” he says, petting Spot, who is greeting him with enormous enthusiasm, tail flicking wildly all over the place, as if he had been unsure he was ever going to see Patrick ever again. “Sorry about that fight, didn’t mean to scare you. Where’s Pete?”

Spot just wants more ear scratches and doesn’t seem very concerned about where Pete is.

Patrick walks over to the bedroom doorway and peeks through it.

Pete is huddled in bed, the covers pulled up over his head.

“Go away,” he says immediately, and Patrick wonders how he knew the exact moment Patrick peeked in.

“I’m not going away,” Patrick says, toeing off his shoes.

“Fuck you,” Pete replies. “Go away and let me be an idiot in peace.”

“Shut up,” Patrick says, climbing onto the bed. “I lost my temper. You know I’m vicious. I’m sorry.”

Pete is a still and silent lump under the blankets.

Patrick settles next to him, looking up at the ceiling, and waits him out.

Spot hops onto the bed and crowds in between them, because that’s how Spot is.

After a little while, Pete pokes his head out from the blanket. “You said we were good dragon moms,” he accuses. “Liar. You think we’re terrible.”

Spot licks Pete’s cheek.

“No, I don’t,” says Patrick.

“You think we’re giving him a horrible life and you want to let him live with the creepy not-reporter with the ugly beard.”

“No,” Patrick says vehemently, “I definitely do _not_ want him to do that. That dude is sketchy. He’s stalking the lobby looking for Spot.”

“And you don’t just want to hand him over so he can have a better life?” Pete demands sourly. “Like Black Beauty on the farm at the end?” 

“I want him to have a better life on a farm, because I think a farm would be a better life than a tour bus. But I don’t want to give him to someone else.”

Pete is silent for a second. “No, seriously, Trick, is this all about wanting us to buy a farm together?”

“You know fuck-all about farming,” Patrick points out.

“I know fuck-all about raising a baby dragon,” replies Pete.

Patrick strokes Spot’s scaled back in silence for a moment. “Touche,” he says finally. He watches Spot tip his head closer to Pete’s. He looks blissfully happy there between his two humans.

Patrick says softly, “I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

“Neither do I,” Pete admits. “And I always know.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I always _think_ I know,” says Pete.

Patrick chuckles fondly.

“We’ll figure something out,” Pete says confidently. “I know we will.”

***

Three days later, Pete gets sick.

At first, Patrick thinks he’s just being Pete, that he’s hit one of his downward patches and doesn’t feel like getting out of bed. Patrick knows that Pete thinks he knows what to do in these circumstances, when in reality Patrick never has any fucking clue. He always feels like he’s flailing around, hoping something will help. Pete always assures him afterward that he helped, that everything he did, whatever it was, was good. Patrick has always been dubious of this, but whatever.

So, at first when Pete is the last one out of bed, Patrick just thinks it’s going to be a rough day, maybe the first in a series. It was odd in the first place that Pete had never crawled into bed with him the night before. He should have known they were heading for something. He exchanges knowing looks with Joe and Andy, because they’re all familiar with this, even if none of them ever feel confident in helping Pete through it. And then he goes to check on Pete. He’s always the designated Pete-checker. It only makes sense. He’s the fucking Pete-whisperer. (Pete is also the Patrick-whisperer, Patrick knows, even though, whatever, he is always the soul of reasonable communication.)

Except that when Patrick goes back to check on Pete, what he finds is not what he expects. Pete is curled under a blanket, visibly trembling, and sweating profusely, his hair plastered to his head. Spot is plastered to Pete, pressed up close against him, and, without moving his head from where it’s tucked against Pete’s shoulder, he gives Patrick a worried look out of his galaxy eyes when Patrick pulls the curtain of Pete’s bunk back.

“Pete,” Patrick says, forcing joviality into his voice, because Pete…doesn’t look good. At all. Pete looks terrible. He’s so pale he’s practically green, and Patrick has never really seen Pete pale, except for once, a time they never talk about but…

Pete, his teeth chattering, opens his eyes a little to peer at him. Pete’s eyes, his bright golden eyes, are dull and flat. He says weakly, “Trick. Hey. How’s it going?”

_Not good_ , Patrick thinks frantically, but says with impressive calmness, “Okay. How are you doing?”

“I…don’t feel great,” says Pete, which looks like the understatement of the century.

Patrick pushes Pete’s soaked hair off his forehead. Pete is burning hot to the touch. It’s alarming. Patrick crouches down and says, as gently as possible, “What did you take?”

Pete’s eyes fly open, and they may be dull but they’re full of hurt indignation. “Nothing.”

“Pete—” Patrick begins regretfully.

“ _Nothing_ ,” Pete says, and closes his eyes and says tiredly, “Fuck you.”

“I’m just—” Patrick huffs in frustration. “I want to help you and I can’t if—”

“I’m sick, you idiot,” Pete mumbles. “I just have some kind of virus. I need to sleep it off.”

Pete looks so, so very bad. Patrick can’t help but be dubious. But there are no telltale empty pill bottles around him, and Patrick doesn’t know what else to look for. Maybe Pete really is just sick.

Patrick looks at Spot, whose tail flicks a little in agitation. _You and me both_ , Patrick thinks, and pats Spot’s ear-tufts in what he hopes is a soothing way.

Then he goes back out to where Joe and Andy are. “Um,” he says. “Pete is _sick_.”

Joe and Andy both look at him.

“Like, sick sick. He’s got a fever. I don’t know. He says it’s a virus or something. Maybe it’s the flu?”

Joe shrugs. “It probably is a virus.”

“He’s not exactly careful about swapping germs with people,” remarks Andy drily.

Patrick chews nervously on his bottom lip and thinks of a pale Pete swallowed up in a hospital bed, looking tiny and fragile and impossibly young. He says, “You don’t think he…”

Joe and Andy, who had both looked away, glance back at him again.

“He what?” Joe asks.

“I don’t know, he…” Patrick makes an awkward gesture with his hand.

“He…?” Andy lifts his eyebrows. “Is this charades we’re playing…?”

Patrick huffs impatiently. “Do you think maybe he overdosed again? Like. I don’t know.”

Now Joe and Andy look at him sharply.

“What makes you think that?” Andy asks.

“Because the last time I saw him looking this terrible, he’d just almost died,” Patrick says bluntly.

So Joe and Andy march into the back and look down at Pete in his bunk, curled into a tight ball, face pressed into his pillow, shivering uncontrollably.

“Oh, fuck,” Joe says, and Patrick’s heart sinks into his feet, because that’s confirmation he’s not overreacting here.

Pete opens one eye, looks at them, and closes it, saying wearily, “Jesus Christ, am I in a zoo? Please don’t tap the glass.”

“Pete, we have to get you to a hospital,” Andy says, brusque and in-control, which is good, because Patrick is frozen in panic, the same way he’d been frozen in panic on that night years ago, Patrick is fucking useless every time Pete _needs_ him.

“Huh?” Pete mumbles. “No, no, no. I’m not leaving this bed. I’m just going to sleep.”

“No, you can’t sleep,” Andy tells him. “Wake up.” Andy pulls him up to sitting harshly.

Spot snarls, breathing a warning belch of smoke in Andy’s direction, as he insinuates himself onto Pete’s lap, keeping Andy away from him. Andy does jump back, as Spot’s nostrils flare with a flicker of fame.

“What the hell,” Pete complains, a hand rubbing sleepily over his sweat-drenched hair. “Just let me sleep it off.”

“If you took something,” Joe says, “we have to—”

“I didn’t _take_ anything.” Pete manages a glare at Patrick. “What the fuck is with all of you? It’s a fucking, I don’t know, fever, or whatever. Get me some Tylenol and leave me alone.”

Patrick reaches out a hand, placing the back of it on Pete’s forehead. Spot lets him, watching closely. Pete is so hot, so, so impossibly hot. The feel of his skin makes Patrick go paradoxically cold all over. “Pete,” he whispers, “this fever…” He swallows thickly. “Please can we take you to a doctor? This fever is making me nervous.”

Pete opens his eyes long enough to meet Patrick’s. Patrick holds his gaze anxiously, letting him see every ounce of concern he’s drowning in.

“Okay,” Pete says, and closes his eyes again. “Fine.” He tips his head back against the wall of the bus and strokes Spot. “But you might have to carry me.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heyyyyy sorry about this chapter, I promise it gets better

They have to carry him, a dead weight they lug into the emergency room, and because he’s basically unconscious at that point, he gets rushed to the back right away. There’s confusion about who they are in relation to Pete (“His band?” the admitting nurse says, wrinkling her nose), and there’s a lot of confusion about the fact that they’ve got a small dragon with them (“He’s just our pet lizard,” Patrick says earnestly, and Spot helpfully does not breathe fire), but the doctor who comes out looks at them kindly and invites them back.

She doesn’t take them to Pete, but rather to a small, empty room, where she sits them down, Spot included. 

Patrick’s eyes flicker around the empty room, and suddenly he thinks, _Oh, my God, Pete’s dead_. He demands, “Where’s Pete?”

“He’s being taken care of,” the doctor answers, “but we’re hoping you might be able to answer some questions for us. Has your friend been out of the country recently? What countries has he traveled to?”

Patrick stares at the doctor in bewilderment. “He hasn’t been anywhere. We’ve been _here_.”

“We are on tour,” Andy says. “But we haven’t left the country. Not for months.”

“Hmm,” says the doctor.

“I can tell you his medications,” Patrick says, “if you think it’s an overdose.”

“It’s not. His toxicology is clean. It’s reading as some kind of viral infection but we can’t pinpoint what it is. He has a high fever and his organs are behaving as if he’s in hypothermia.”

“Hot to the touch, cold on the inside,” murmurs Joe. 

“Okay,” says Patrick. “Can you treat it?”

The doctor looks at him, this look that makes Patrick go even colder. Patrick has been ice for hours now, and he’s not sure he’s ever going to thaw. “We’re doing everything we can,” she says gently. “Do you know how to get in touch with his family? Because I think you should call them.”

Patrick’s frozen self shatters into a million pieces. He can’t help with any of the details Andy and Joe are going over, about what to say to Pete’s parents, and where the fuck they even _are_ right now (it’s a tour, it can blur together), because he is _shattered_ , he needs to sit in a corner somewhere and try to figure out how to put himself back together, he fucking needs _Pete_.

“I want to see Pete,” Patrick cuts into whatever the fuck everybody else is talking about that doesn’t matter.

“He’s—” the doctor begins.

_You don’t understand_ , Patrick wants to tell her. _I’m always the one who can fix Pete_. There was one time he wasn’t there to fix Pete and Patrick has promised himself, over and over, not to let that happen again, to _be_ there next time, and now he’s standing in a room being told to call Pete’s family and he needs to be with Pete.

Patrick says, “No, no, I need to see Pete, let me see him.”

He must sound so desperate that the doctor’s face softens and she says, “Okay. This way.”

“I’ll be right back,” Patrick tells Spot, who looks at him with those wide Milky Way eyes of his. “I’m going to check on Pete and then I’ll be right back. Stay with Joe and Andy.”

Spot’s tail twitches, and he watches Patrick all the way out of the room.

Patrick smothers his déjà vu ruthlessly, his sense of doubling when he sees Pete in another hospital bed, pale and tiny and fragile and young. There are monitors all around, beeping discordantly into the air. Pete’s eyes are closed. Patrick draws a finger lightly along the tattoo on Pete’s wrist.

Pete opens his eyes and then closes them immediately, mumbling, “Patrick.”

“Hey,” Patrick whispers, then clears his throat and aims for a louder tone. “I’m here.”

“I feel…really terrible,” Pete says wearily, and sighs.

He sounds so hollow and empty, this voice that has dominated Patrick’s life for all these years, this voice always whispering in Patrick’s ear, this voice Patrick sings for. Patrick feels like he’s already lost him. Desperation has him climbing into the bed, gathering Pete up in all his sweaty grossness. “I know,” he says softly, holding him tight. “I know.”

“Can you stay?” Pete asks. “You know I don’t…sleep right. On my own.”

“I will stay forever,” Patrick whispers. “I will stay forever and ever. You know that, right? Tell me you know that.”

“’Course I know,” Pete says blurrily, with his head nestled on Patrick’s chest. “You and me. True blue. Me and you. In the wake of Saturday. Saturday. One more time.”

“Shh,” Patrick says, stroking Pete’s soaked hair. Pete is so, so hot against him, he could dissolve into ashes, and yet still Patrick feels like ice. “Shh,” he says again, trying to stop Pete’s babble. “Quiet now. We don’t need to talk.”

“One more time,” Pete murmurs into Patrick’s shirt. “Let me hear your voices. Saturday.”

“Shh,” Patrick says again, face pressed into Pete’s hair, and now he is thawing out, leaking into tears, adding to the disaster that is Pete’s hair at the moment.

“Open-ended,” Pete slurs out unevenly. “Open-ended.”

“Hush, I’ll sing it for you,” Patrick manages, willing his tears back. “Pete and I attacked the Lost Astoria,” he sings, but it’s broken and out-of-tune because he can’t stop weeping long enough to do it. _A mess of youthful innocence_ , Patrick thinks, swiping his tears away furiously, pressing his face into Pete’s beloved hair. Everything about Pete feels so beloved in this moment, every stupid, annoying, assholish thing he’s ever done, Patrick can’t imagine a life without all of that constant irritation, all of the Pete-related frustration, what is life without that, is that even _living_?

Pete’s breaths are harsh and labored and slow against him, and his skin is like touching fire, and there’s a sour smell to him that makes Patrick’s lungs seize up and his heart stutter, like the scent of impending doom. It is not Pete’s usual smell, which Patrick knows well, because he has known him through the most disgusting of situations, and Patrick never before thought of Pete’s odor as _healthy_ until this moment.

There are a lot of things Patrick has never thought until this moment. It wasn’t like this last time, he showed up after it was all over last time, Pete was out of the woods, and he’d thought _that_ was terrifying. This is… This is…

“Read about the afterlife,” Pete breathes against him.

“Stop it,” Patrick says, by which he means _stop all of this_.

“Trick,” wheezes Pete, pressed against him, hot and sweaty and limp. “I want to say thank you.”

“For what?” asks Patrick.

“You know what,” Pete answers, and there’s a trace of a smile to his tone, a faint thread of it. It’s a sound Patrick knows well, the smile in Pete’s voice, and this shadow of it slams into him. Patrick doesn’t understand any of this, yesterday Pete was _fine_.

“I’ve got to fix this,” Patrick says. “I have to fix this. This isn’t what we’re doing, Wentz, do you hear me? I’m going to fix this.”

Pete doesn’t answer him, but Pete is still breathing, and while Pete is still breathing, Patrick has a chance.


	7. Chapter 7

Patrick marches into the room where he left Joe, Andy, and Spot with his hands in furious fists. Patrick is going to beat the entire world into submission to save Pete.

Spot comes bounding over to him, wings fluttering anxiously, and Joe and Andy look at him carefully and then Joe says slowly, “So. How is he?”

“This isn’t a thing that is happening,” Patrick says between clenched teeth. “It is not going to happen.”

“I know you’re stubborn,” Joe says, not unkindly, “but you can’t just out-stubborn this.”

“Watch me,” Patrick bites back. “The world has never _seen_ the stubbornness I am about to unleash. Pete is going to be _fine_ , do you hear me?”

“Patrick,” Andy says gently. “Listen. The doctor says—”

“Shut up,” Patrick cuts him off. “It doesn’t matter. You’re not allowed to talk to me unless you’re going to help me.”

“Help you do what?” asks Joe. “How are you going to figure out how to cure Pete? No one here even knows what’s making him sick. You’d have to be some kind of wizard to figure it out.”

Patrick stills. He looks at Joe fixedly. He says, “Hang on. What did you just say?”

“I said no one knows what’s making him sick.”

“No, you said I’d have to be a wizard,” says Patrick numbly, and looks at Spot, and thinks of a bearded hipster dude in a hotel. _You have taken something very precious to me. I can easily take something very precious to you._ Patrick thinks of Pete dying of a mysterious fever in a hospital bed and can think of nothing in his life more precious to him than Pete. “Oh, fuck,” he says breathlessly, and sinks to the floor, because he can’t hold himself up anymore. He was blithe with a wizard and that wizard cursed Pete, he thinks, curling his fingers into his hair and pulling, closing his eyes against the panic. Pete is fucking _cursed_ , motherfucker, how’s he supposed to break a wizard’s curse?

Spot nudges at Patrick and Patrick can’t even acknowledge him, Patrick can’t do anything.

“Patrick,” Andy says, crouching down next to him and tugging at him. “Come on, let’s get you into a chair—”

“This is my fault,” Patrick says.

“It’s not, okay?” says Joe. “It’s no one’s fault. It’s—”

“No, it’s my fault. There was a wizard, and he wanted Spot, and I was so blasé about it, I was so…so stupid, I told him he couldn’t have Spot, I told him to suck my dick, and he said he’d take something precious from me, oh, my God, I cursed Pete, he’s my something precious.”

Joe and Andy are both staring at him. Patrick starts petting Spot reflexively, running his hands over his smooth dragon scales, the ones that pulse warmth like an oven.

“A wizard?” Joe repeats.

“Well,” says Andy. “It makes sense. Who else would own a dragon?”

“So a wizard cursed Pete because you wouldn’t give him Spot?” clarifies Joe. “What the fuck, Patrick, just give him Spot and we’ll try to figure out visitation rights or sue for custody or something.”

Patrick looks from Spot to Joe and back again, horrified. “He’s going to kill Spot, he just wants to use his organs in spells!”

“Oh.” Joe blinks and looks at Spot. “Okay, but…he’s also going to kill _Pete_ ,” Joe points out.

Spot, tail moving uneasily, looks at Patrick, and Patrick tries to imagine taking the light out of those eyes. “Joe, I can’t, like, I can’t kill Spot to save Pete, I can’t—That’s like asking me if I would kill you to save Pete.” Patrick gathers Spot close up against him. “Spot is _our_ dragon, Spot is—We are his _moms_ , I can’t just—I mean, I could, I—Fuck.” Patrick presses his face into Spot’s scales. He doesn’t want to hand Spot over to be killed. Spot _trusts_ him. And Pete will never forgive him when he gets better. A Pete who hates him is better than a dead Pete, but that still leaves him with a _dead Spot_. He can’t look Spot in his galaxy eyes and hand him over to an executioner. “I have to try to save both of them,” he mumbles against Spot. “I have to _try_.”

“Well, you better figure it out pretty fucking quickly,” Joe snaps. “Pete is _dying_.”

“Joe,” Andy inserts quietly. “That’s not really helping things.”

“Oh, and _Patrick_ is helping things?” Joe demands.

“I’m trying,” Patrick insists sharply, looking up.

“You’re trying to break some kind of fairy-tale curse, how is that helping, where will you even start?”

“I don’t know, I’ll…Google,” Patrick says weakly. He’s aware this is a terrible idea. He’s aware Pete is in the other room dying because of him. Spot curls up against him, wriggling as close as he can get, and Patrick closes his eyes in exhaustion. “Fuck,” he says, because he doesn’t know what else to say.

“Hang on,” Andy says. “Wait.”

Joe and Patrick both look at him. Spot stays with his head tucked on Patrick’s shoulder.

He has his phone out, and his voice has a curious tone as he says, “You know how you break a fairy-tale curse?”

“Huh?” says Patrick. “What?”

“I just Googled,” Andy says. “Like you said.” He looks up from his phone at Patrick. “How to break a fairy-tale curse: true love’s kiss.”

There’s a beat of silence.

“ _Oh_ ,” says Joe.

“True love’s kiss?” Patrick echoes blankly. “How is that helping us? All of a sudden we’re going to locate Pete’s true love? Which of this past week’s girls do you think it is?” His voice is dripping sarcasm, because this whole situation is the fucking _worst_ , Patrick wants to _scream_.

“Patrick,” Andy says, like Patrick is supposed to think this is helpful.

“Andy,” Patrick replies, long-suffering.

“ _Patrick_ ,” says Joe.

“What the fuck, this isn’t helpful,” Patrick complains. “What are we doing right now?”

“Pete needs his true love, Patrick,” Joe says. “Think about it. You don’t know who his true love is?”

Patrick stares at him. For as long as Patrick has known Pete, he has either had completely dysfunctional relationships that could never by any stretch of the imagination be termed _true love_ , or he’s had a series of meaningless one-night stands that he’d write romantic true-love poetry about but he was wrong, that was all just sex and Patrick knew that. Patrick says slowly, “No.”

“Patrick,” Andy says, and there’s a faint smile on his lips, like this is fucking _funny_.

“Look, I don’t know what you two think you know about Pete that I don’t but I wish you’d just spill instead of being so fucking coy about it,” Patrick snaps. “Pete doesn’t have _good_ relationships.”

“Pete has a few good relationships,” Joe says. “He’s got one fucking _phenomenal_ relationship, like, wow, did he luck into that one.”

Why is everyone in his band suddenly the fucking Riddler? Patrick thinks, annoyed. “What relationship is that?”

“What relationship is that, Patrick?” asks Joe mockingly.

“What relationship is Pete’s _best_ relationship?” asks Andy. “What relationship is the one Pete relies on more than anything else? Who is Pete’s first phone call, always? Who is the person Pete seeks out in a crowd to get close to immediately? Who is the person Pete is most devoted to in the entire world? Who gives Pete his voice? Who _understands_ Pete’s voice? Who, in all the vast numbers of people Pete Wentz knows – who’s his _true blue_?”

Patrick sits on the floor looking at Andy with Spot in his lap, and for the first time since he found Pete hot and clammy in his bed, Patrick can feel _warmth_. It’s slow and creeping, the sun coming out, all of Patrick’s ice-cold dread receding. Because he fucking knows the answer to these questions.

“It’s me,” he whispers, astonished, and the final slivers of ice inside of him melt into nothingness. For the first time, Patrick becomes aware of the bright sunlight slanting into the room, painting everything perfectly golden. It’s a beautiful day. It seems abruptly impossible that Pete could die on a beautiful day, when his true love is sitting on the floor, ready to save him.

Spot lifts his head up and thumps his tail on the floor a few times.

Joe and Andy beam at him.

“It’s you,” Andy says. “Go kiss your boy.”

“And let’s hope your weird magical antidote thing works,” Joe adds.

Joe’s right. This is a long shot. But this is his chance. This is his one idea. Patrick gets out from under Spot and promises him, “I’ll be right back,” and then goes running down the hallway, dodging doctors and nurses. He barrels his way into Pete’s room, where Pete is silent and still in his hospital bed. The loudest thing in the room is the machines strapped to him, beeping away, and that’s wrong, Pete should always be the loudest thing in every room, Pete should stand in the middle of the room and demand attention, Pete should not be shrinking into nothingness in that bed.

Patrick stands by the bed, out of breath, and looks down at Pete.

Here is the thing about Patrick Stump’s life. If you want to look at it as a fairy tale, then: Once upon a time, when he was still a kid, he met a boy named Pete Wentz who promised him the world. And Patrick has spent all the years since then trying to figure out if the way he feels about Pete is just how you feel about your best friend with the added complicating factor of that best friend literally having made your dreams come true, or if maybe—if he had to put a label on it—if maybe he was in love. If maybe all the swoops in his stomach and tingles in his chest, the way Pete makes him smile more than anyone else, even when he’s making him furious, the stupid attention Patrick’s imagination decides to lavish on Pete’s tattoos at inopportune moments – all of that, Patrick has wondered, could be love. Or it could be he’s a fucked-up kid who doesn’t know up from down, whatever. The point is. _The point is_. Maybe Patrick’s kind of wondered for a long time now if he has a crush on Pete Wentz, if he’s _in love with_ Pete Wentz, and it seems like a hell of a time to bring this to a head, to hope that your first kiss will be magically curse-breaking.

Patrick tries to take a slow, deep breath, his heart hammering in his chest, studying Pete’s beloved face on the pillow. If Patrick’s not _in love_ with Pete, he undeniably still _loves_ him, and there can be all sorts of true love, and Joe and Andy are right, the wizard is right: Pete is his most precious thing. And that’s got to be true love.

Patrick brushes Pete’s hair back off his forehead, still burning hot to the touch, and whispers, “Hey, you. I love you a lot. I don’t say that enough. At all. I guess I assumed that you know. Although maybe you don’t. Fuck it. I’m going to kiss you now.” And then he leans over and presses his lips to Pete’s.

That’s all it is, just the press of his mouth to Pete’s, at an awkward angle, but Pete reacts, sucks in a shocked, strangled breath as soon as Patrick’s lips touch his. There’s a softness to Pete’s lips, and that inhale sounds like an invitation to Patrick, and he allows himself another brief kiss, a small sipping taste of Pete.

Pete’s mouth opens. Pete’s tongue joins the proceedings, coaxing its way into Patrick’s mouth. Pete’s hands are abruptly twisted into the front of Patrick’s shirt, pulling him closer, closer, closer.

It starts as an awkward press of his lips and it ends with Patrick, kiss-dazed and lust-drunk, sprawled over Pete in a hospital bed.

Patrick doesn’t know exactly why it ends, just that Pete pulls back and looks at him in confusion. “Huh,” he says. “Hi.”

Patrick looks at Pete, his eyes bright and fever-free, the color back in his cheeks. He takes his hand from Pete’s crotch ( _oops, how had it ended up there?_ ) and brushes his other hand briefly across Pete’s forehead. It’s cool to the touch. It’s fucking _normal_.

Patrick loses all the air that was left in his body, he loses the little strength he had left holding himself up away from Pete. He collapses onto him, presses his face against Pete’s neck, and it’s not burning hot, and Patrick breathes out, “Thank God.”

Pete puts his hands in Patrick’s hair, not quite holding him there but definitely not pushing him away. “Tricky,” he says. “I applaud the spirit, trust me. But what the fuck is going on right now?”

Patrick doesn’t even know what to say to that. _I’m your true love?_ That sounds like the most ridiculous thing in the universe, and yet it’s apparently true, for whatever the fuck that means. And the absurdity coupled with the relief makes him start laughing, shaking with it, hysterical with it, he laughs against Pete’s cool, comfortable body in this beeping machine hospital room.

“I’m worried about you, Trickster,” Pete says fondly, sounding bewildered, stroking his hands through Patrick’s hair.

“No, it’s…” Patrick lifts his head up to look down at Pete. “It’s a fairy tale.”

“A fairy tale?” Pete lifts his eyebrows, and then says, “Oh, my God, are you my Prince Charming?” with more enthusiasm than Patrick would ever have thought he’d be able to muster mere minutes earlier.

“I’m not—” Patrick starts.

“You are!” Pete crows triumphantly. “You’re my Prince Charming and you just saved me with true love’s kiss.” Pete is grinning joyously, looking delighted.

Patrick swallows thickly and says, “Yeah, kind of,” and the grin slowly fades off of Pete’s face.

“Hang on,” Pete says. “You’re serious?”

“Yeah, it’s like… It’s a long story.”

“No, wait, you’re serious,” Pete says slowly, thoughtfully, and shifts so he’s sitting up. “I was just super-sick, and now I’m not, because you kissed me. Because you kissed me?”

“I think so,” Patrick says awkwardly. He sits back to give Pete space. “Maybe.”

“But—” Pete begins quizzically, tipping his head.

And then the doctor comes in and says, “What the fuck,” very unprofessionally. And then she says, flustered, “I mean—sorry—what.” And then she stops, blinking at Pete.

“He’s better,” Patrick offers helpfully.

“He was, like, a few hours away from _death_ ,” says the doctor in astonishment. “What happened?”

Patrick winces.

Pete says, “You don’t pull punches, do you?”

“I usually do,” she says dismissively, walking over to peer closely at Pete, “I’m just…shocked.”

“It’s a miracle,” Pete says blithely. “Someone up there really loves me.” Pete shifts his eyes to look at Patrick.

“That explains Fall Out Boy’s career,” remarks Joe, as he and Andy and Spot enter the room.

Spot bounds over to the hospital bed and leaps on top of it, and Patrick realizes he’s still fucking sitting on Pete’s hospital bed, and that seems awkward, but now it seems like it will be even more awkward if he tries to sidle away without anyone noticing (they’re all going to notice). He sits there, frozen and silly, while Spot breathes puffs of smoke up toward the ceiling in excitement, his tail waving wildly. Patrick grabs his tail to keep it still as Spot butts his head against Pete, so at least he’s serving a purpose.

“And what is that lizard?” the doctor asks, very faintly. And then, “I might need to lie down,” and then she wanders out of the room.

“That poor doctor,” Andy comments.

“So,” says Joe shrewdly, “things went well here, I take it?”

“Um,” says Patrick, and he knows he’s blushing.

“Yeah, I mean, I’m not dead, so I guess so,” says Pete, “but I’m not entirely clear on what’s going on?”

“Well,” says Joe, “at first we thought you just picked up some kind of gross flu-type thing from all the indiscriminate bodily fluids you swap.”

“Fair,” says Pete.

“Patrick thought you overdosed on something,” Andy contributes helpfully.

“Yeah, I remember,” says Pete, “I wasn’t out of it the _whole_ time.”

“Anyway, it turned out that Patrick got you fairy-tale cursed, so he had to kiss you to break it,” finishes Joe brightly.

Patrick hates all of his friends. His friends are all awful.

Pete looks at him.

Patrick grumbles, “I want to quit the band, last night was my last show, I’m going into hiding.”

“You got me fairy-tale cursed?” Pete sounds awed, like this is impressive, like Patrick is _impressive_ for this.

Patrick is going to have to tell this story. The world isn’t going to conveniently end so he can avoid it, goddamn it. “I didn’t mean to,” says Patrick. “That wizard dude is after Spot.”

“Wizard dude?” echoes Pete.

“The hipster beard guy. From the interview.”

“He’s after Spot, so I got cursed?” says Pete, sounding confused.

“I may have kind of told him to suck my dick,” Patrick admits reluctantly.

“Again I say: And _I_ got cursed?”

“Well.” Patrick looks at Joe and Andy. “Do you want fucking popcorn for this?” he inquires hotly.

“Yeah, actually,” says Joe.

But Andy, the only good member of Fall Out Boy, takes Patrick’s hint. “Come on, let’s check out the vending machines.”

Joe frowns but lets Andy pull him out of the room.

Patrick looks at Pete, whose eyes have never left him. This whole thing is humiliating as fuck, but Pete’s golden eyes are glowing with life, and Patrick would do everything again in a heartbeat, even though, yeah, now he has to get himself through this conversation.

Pete breaks the silence. “When did you tell the wizard to suck your dick?” The question is calm and conversational but Pete’s eyes are avid on him.

“After we fought,” Patrick says. “I went looking for you. I ran into him instead.”

“And what happened after he didn’t take kindly to your blowjob invitation?” asks Pete wryly.

“He said…” Patrick takes a deep breath and looks at Spot, curled up with his head on Pete’s lap. His eyes are closed and his mouth is turned up in a smile. Spot’s a pretty expressive dragon. Patrick says, “He said I’d taken something precious to him, so he was going to take something precious to me.”

Pete sucks in a sharp breath.

Patrick keeps looking at Spot.

Pete says softly, “Patrick, this is the most romantic story I have ever heard, ever.”

Patrick doesn’t really know what to make of that. “I got you cursed.”

“I just mean, like, I didn’t think anything would ever… I didn’t think you and I would ever… And instead we got a _fairy tale_. _Patrick_.”

Patrick looks at Pete because he can’t _not_ when he says his name in that tone of voice. He is still watching Patrick, and he is very beautiful, and Patrick always thinks Pete is beautiful, and Patrick never lets himself think Pete is beautiful. He does now, though. He thinks of how real the loss of Pete felt, and suddenly he doesn’t want to waste another minute _not_ thinking about how much he wants Pete.

“Tell me if I’m getting this wrong,” Pete says, his voice gentler than Patrick’s ever heard it before. Pete’s not usually gentle, Pete usually gallops right into things. Patrick closes his eyes, a little undone just by that _tone_. “I got cursed because I’m precious to you?” Pete goes on.

Patrick nods wordlessly. He’s not sure he could speak now if he tried.

“And then,” Pete murmurs, “and then you saved me from certain death with true love’s kiss, is that right?”

Patrick nods again.

Pete whispers, “Patrick, look at me.”

Patrick opens his eyes.

Pete has shifted closer to him, well within kissing distance, close enough that he is Patrick’s entire _world_. Pete studies his face, and then he says, “Hi,” and sends him a soft, small smile.

It makes Patrick smile back. He can’t help it. “Hi,” he replies, keeping his voice as soft as Pete’s.

“Can I tell you a secret?” Pete whispers, inching closer.

“Yeah,” Patrick whispers back, licking his lips.

“I always knew you were magic,” Pete says, and kisses him.

Patrick was too worried and confused to really enjoy their first kiss.

He enjoys the fuck out of this one.

Pete’s a good kisser, he’s a fucking fabulous kisser, he’s a pack-your-bags-and-go-home-no-one’s-ever-doing-better-than-this sort of kisser, it’s really a shame how they’re going to have to cancel the rest of the tour because he’s never going to stop kissing Pete long enough to sing a song.

He’s on his back with Pete sprawled over him, Pete’s hands spanning his ribcage, his hands on Pete’s ass, when the door opens and Joe says, “Hey—”

He and Pete say, “Get out,” in unison, and Joe says, “Okay,” and the door clicks back closed.

Pete snorts laughter, kisses the corner of Patrick’s mouth. “Every day was a test of willpower not to kiss you,” he says, kissing him. “Not kissing you was like this thing on my to-do list, ‘don’t kiss Patrick,’ it was this thing I had to remind myself of, this thing I had to watch out for, like, I might just kiss you without thinking if I didn’t pay close attention, every day, to the effort of _not_ kissing you.”

Patrick tries to imagine it, what he would have done if Pete had just kissed him one of those days. The truth is, he doesn’t know.

Pete goes on, “I’m telling you all of this because I don’t think I can stop now. I’m just going to have to kiss you forever. I hope that’s okay.”

Patrick has no excuse but Pete’s kisses for the fact that he says, “I spent all this time trying to figure out if everyone wants their best friend to kiss them as much as I wanted to kiss you.” And when he says it out loud, it sounds fucking ridiculous, but, like, when he was in the middle of it, it felt convoluted and confusing as fuck.

Pete’s smile is blinding. “Tricky, you are my favorite person in the whole entire fucking universe. I mean, you knew that already, but you’re my favorite _pants feeling_ person, too.”

“God, that line shouldn’t work,” Patrick says breathlessly, “it’s a fucking terrible line, there’s something wrong with the way I’m wired.”

Pete laughs again, and Patrick is pretty sure he’s about to go back to kissing him, except the door opens again and Andy says, “Okay, but—”

“Get out,” Pete and Patrick say again in unison.

“Believe me, I would, but—”

All of the machines in the room suddenly start beeping, a cacophony of noise. Pete sits up between Patrick’s legs, looking quizzical. Spot, who’d apparently leaped off the bed, _freaks out_ , slamming into Patrick as he jumps back onto the bed, fire slipping out of his nostrils and lighting up the sheets.

“Oh, fuck,” Pete exclaims, trying to get the fire out, and Patrick tries to scramble up, and Spot is clawing at Patrick like he’s trying to crawl under his shirt or something, and then the wizard guy says, “Oh, hey, it looks like we’ve got some stuff to discuss.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> End of the ride! Thank you for coming along on my silly dragon fic journey.

Patrick had this soft, sweet, lovely feeling, heavy with desire and light with adoration, and he loses it all at once, all in an instant, and an instinct kicks in that he always knew he had but he never acted on until that moment.

Pete snarls, “Oh, you fucking asshole—” and goes to lean toward the hipster dude and Patrick pushes him back and shoves Spot onto his lap and puts himself right in front of them, between them and this wizard.

“We’re not doing this,” Patrick says sharply.

The hipster dude looks amused. “Oh, we’re not?”

“Patrick,” Pete says, struggling a little bit, trying to move out from behind him.

“Stay back there,” Patrick snaps at him, and turns back to the wizard. “No. We’re not.”

“Oh, good, so you’re giving me the dragon?”

“Fuck you,” spits out Patrick.

“See, that doesn’t sound like someone who just learned a very valuable and important lesson about what happens when you cross me,” says the wizard, mildly but with a threat underneath, present in the way he gazes heavily at Patrick.

“I have a dragon you care about so little you want to kill him, and you tried to take away someone I love and can’t imagine living without,” Patrick retorts. “That’s not an even exchange.”

“An even exchange wasn’t my intention,” the wizard replies lightly.

“We’re not giving you Spot,” says Patrick.

“Then I’ll take Pete,” says the wizard.

“No, you won’t,” says Patrick.

“Then I’ll take _you_ ,” says the wizard.

Patrick says nothing.

Pete says, “No, wait, what the fuck, _no_ ,” and scrambles out past Patrick. “You’re out of your fucking mind,” he bites at him, and then looks at the wizard. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“You stole my dragon—”

“He was given to us,” Pete says, “probably because you were going to _kill_ him. What’s wrong with you? He’s a dragon! Why would you fucking kill a _dragon_? Dragons are awesome! How often do you see a dragon?”

“Exactly,” the wizard responds icily. “Precisely why his organs are so valuable for my spells.”

“That’s really creepy,” Pete says, “and you should stop that. You’ve got issues, man.”

“Silence!” thunders the wizard.

“You’re the one making all the noise,” says Pete, “you’ve got these machines beeping out of control.”

The wizard narrows his eyes at Pete. “Why aren’t you dead?”

“Because love is more powerful than any spell. Haven’t you ever read Harry Potter?”

“Saved by true love’s kiss,” says the wizard distastefully, looking at Patrick.

“Yeah,” Pete responds, “and I’ve got to tell you, you’re really preventing true love’s kiss from turning into true love’s orgasm here, so why don’t you stop cockblocking and _go away_?”

“Gladly,” says the wizard. “With the dragon.”

And Patrick’s been fighting all this time for Spot but he realizes in that moment that he’s not sure Pete agrees.

And then Pete says tightly, “His name is Spot,” and Patrick knows there’s no way in hell Pete’s ever handing Spot over.

“Look,” Patrick says, “we’ll buy him from you, how much is he worth?”

“He’s irreplaceable,” the wizard sniffs.

“Come on,” Pete says, rolling his eyes, “everyone has a price, what’s yours?”

The wizard looks from Pete to Patrick. And then he smiles silkily and points at Patrick. “His voice.”

There’s a moment of dumbfounded silence. The beeping machines fill it. 

Patrick says finally, “My voice?”

The wizard’s smile is slimy, Patrick feels like oil is oozing into the room with them. “You have no idea the weapon you’ve got in your throat. You have no idea the things you could do with it. I could do so much better, it’s wasted on you.”

“Okay,” Pete says uneasily, and shifts to put himself between the wizard and Patrick. “You’re not taking his voice, don’t be ridiculous.”

“I could take your words,” the wizard says to Pete. “You do wield those sharply but you could cut so much more. I could use those, too.”

Pete swallows thickly and says, “Can’t you be a not-evil wizard for, like, two seconds?”

“Where’s the fun in that?” asks the wizard. “Anyway, I am the wronged party here. I need some amount of vengeance, would you not agree?”

“Not if the vengeance is killing something, no,” says Pete.

“How long would you need my voice for?” Patrick asks suddenly.

Pete looks at him. “What? Patrick, no—”

“I’m not giving it to you forever,” Patrick says evenly, watching the wizard. “If it’s as powerful as you say, then you don’t need it very long. A day?”

The wizard regards him, narrow-eyed. “A week,” he says.

“Patrick, wait, no,” Pete protests.

“We’ll cancel a few shows, it saves Spot, it saves you,” Patrick says. “It’s fine.”

“But what’s he going to _do_ with it?” says Pete.

This gives Patrick pause.

And then a thing happens that, honestly, for whatever reason, had never occurred to Patrick before. Spot stands up on his hind legs behind them, his forelegs resting on Pete and Patrick, and he looks at the wizard, and he bellows a stream of fire at him.

The heat of the fireball Spot throws flings Pete and Patrick backward on the bed. The wizard starts screaming, and he doesn’t stop. Spot leaps off the bed, following his fireball up with another one, and then another one. The fire alarms go off, and water starts raining down from the sprinklers in the ceiling, but it doesn’t seem to affect Spot’s fire. The wizard screams and screams until he stops, until all Patrick can see is ash and cinders on the floor, and Spot breathes one last hot breath over the pile.

And then looks up at Pete and Patrick and wags his tail.

The room is very loud, but it still feels silent.

Spot bounds over to the bed and up onto it and immediately commences to cuddling with them.

“Did he just kill that dude?” Pete asks, his voice low and shocked.

“Kind of seems that way,” Patrick manages numbly.

The doctor runs in and shouts, “And what the fuck is happening in this room _now_?”

***

Spot is still Spot with them. You’d never know he burned a wizard to a crisp. He trots behind them like an oversized puppy, sleeping curled at the end of their bunk.

It really cramps their sex life.

When Patrick complains, Pete says, “He saved us from an evil wizard,” which Patrick supposes trumps his orgasms, whatever.

On hotel nights, Spot obediently curls up in the bathroom and Pete takes Patrick totally apart to make up for their weird bus situation.

Patrick appreciates it.

Eventually, though, Spot is too big. He keeps growing and growing and they can’t keep him a secret and, anyway, Spot spends longer and longer periods of time outside when they stop the bus, sitting in the middle of empty, open fields and looking up at the sky, like he’s watching for something.

Patrick’s the one who says it, because one of them has to. “I think he’s getting ready to leave us.” He’s sitting next to Pete, watching Spot in the field. He’s taken to flying now, his wings grown in and powerful, and he’s sweeping laps around them, the air pulsating with the beats of his wings.

Pete doesn’t say anything. Pete presses his face into his drawn-up knees.

“He should,” Patrick continues gently. “He’s probably got a family somewhere. He should go be with them. We were never going to be able to have him live with us on a bus forever.”

“I know,” mumbles Pete.

Patrick looks at him, then moves closer and leans against him. Pete is the one more inclined to initiate cuddles; Patrick knows how much they mean to him.

“I’m going to miss him a lot,” Pete says.

“Yeah,” Patrick agrees. “Me, too.”

When Spot does leave, it’s at the end of the summer. There’s a week left in the tour. The nights have started to taste of fall. Joe and Andy keep saying how much they can’t wait to not be living with a pair of sex maniacs (whatever). Spot sits in the middle of a field in Pennsylvania, framed by a billboard about meeting Jesus and a billboard about abortion, and looks from Pete and Patrick to the sky and back again. Then he lumbers over and looks at them with his expressive galaxy eyes.

“Yeah,” Patrick says. “You’ve got to go. We figured it out.”

Spot wags his tail and leans down to press his head against first Patrick’s cheek, and then Pete’s.

Patrick scratches behind his ear tufts one last time.

Pete says, “This is the saddest moment of my entire life,” morose.

Spot looks morose, too, snuffling at Pete’s face anxiously, like he wants a smile out of him before he leaves.

“You’ve got to promise to come back to visit,” Pete tells him.

Spot wags his tail some more.

Pete flings his arms around his neck and kisses the scales there. “Also, if we ever need to kill someone again, you’re going to show up, deal?”

Spot does something Patrick’s never seen him do before, and licks Pete’s cheek.

Then he gives them one last constellation look, and then he bounds over the field and up into the air, and he beats his wings once, twice, three times, and he’s already a tiny dot on the horizon.

“Oh, fuck,” Pete says thickly. “Fuck, I fucking hate the fucking end of fucking summer.” Pete, sniffling, gets up and goes back onto the bus.

Patrick takes a second to lift up his glasses and press his hands against the wetness on his cheeks, the tears on his eyelashes. Then he stands up and follows Pete in.

Joe and Andy give him a sympathetic look, and he moves past them into the sleeping quarters, and then into the bed where Pete’s curled in a ball.

“I don’t leave,” he says fiercely. “You know that, right? I’m the thing that doesn’t leave.”

Pete looks at him for a long moment, then says, “Spot gave me you. That’s what Spot left me with: you.”

And Patrick thinks, _No, Spot gave me_ you. He doesn’t say that, though. He leans over and kisses Pete softly.

And a week later, when the tour is over, when they’re pulling their stuff off the bus, when Patrick’s thinking how the rest of their life is about to begin, new music, the next album, the next tour, only with them being a Them now—Pete comes to stand beside him and curl their hands together and kiss his ear and say, “Your place or mine?”

And Patrick thinks, _You know what was a good idea? Pete keeping that dragon egg_.

He doesn’t say it out loud, though. Pete doesn’t need the encouragement.


End file.
